With a band as conceptually deep as Radiohead, it’s unsurprising that a number of esoteric theories have emerged from fans forging connections between songs, albums and themes from across the band’s career.
The grandaddy of all these quests for hidden meanings, is undoubtedly the ‘Binary Code’ theory.
Also known by some as ‘TENspiracy’ or the 'OK Rainbow' theory, this idea - first mooted by fan and music blogger Puddlegum on his blog back in 2007, pointed to the (actually, very real) fact that the number ten seemed to be cropping up frequently around the release of their spellbinding seventh studio album, In Rainbows.
After a lengthy and somewhat storied recording process, In Rainbows was finally announced in September 2007 by Jonny Greenwood. “Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days; we've called it In Rainbows,” Greenwood said, in a post on Radiohead’s blog.
During that ten-day interim, ten mysterious messages were posted daily by the band on their website, which heavily featured the letter X (for those who didn’t pay attention in history class, that’s the Roman numeral for the number 10). Examples of these cryptic phrases include the likes of ‘March Wa X’, and ‘Xendless Xurbia’.
Eventually released online via its innovative - and pirate-deterring - ‘pay what you want’ mechanic, on October 10th (10/10…) the ten-track In Rainbows was instantly praised and poured over by fans.
Noting the frequency of the number ten, Puddlegum, just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was hinting toward something.
Noticing that the album’s title also had ten letters was just too much.
Radiohead’s 1997 masterwork, OK Computer - released exactly 10 years previously - also had a 10-letter title. Creeped out yet? Puddlegum certainly was.
Oddly enough, OK Computer’s original title was 'Zeroes and Ones', implying binary code. In the theorist’s eyes, this served as the mirror-image of the number 10.
"If OK Computer is represented by 01, and In Rainbows is represented by 10, then we have 01 and 10. In binary code 01 and 10 complement each other," explained Puddlegum on his blog, thereby dubbing his theory, the 0110 (OK Rainbows) theory. This soon became more commonly referred to as the 'Binary Code' theory.
Puddlegum’s interpretation of these connections was that In Rainbows was intended to be not just a spiritual successor to OK Computer, but a vital extra half of what is essentially Radiohead's magnum opus - a double album.
In Rainbows, Puddlegum speculated, had been carefully designed to be played together with OK Computer via a lengthy playlist that fused tracks from both records.
A ‘jigsaw falling into place' as it were.
And so, Puddlegum made the playlist, and instructed readers of his blog to do the same.
Suitably intrigued, a thousand nerds donned their headphones.
"To create the 01 and 10 playlist, begin with OK Computer's track one, Airbag, and follow this with In Rainbow's track one, 15 Step," briefed Puddlegum. "Alternate the albums, track by track, until you reach Karma Police on OK Computer, making All I Need the tenth track on the 01 and 10 playlist."
As fans soon realised, a surprising number of sonic connections did in fact present themselves.
A widely pointed-to one was the apparent connectivity of the reverb that concluded Subterranean Homesick Alien and that bled seamlessly into the equally reverb-swamped beginning of In Rainbows' gem Nude. Also, the beats at the end of Airbag seemed to set the correct pace for 15 Step.
But, this was deeper than just a few sonic similarities, as Puddlegum elaborated. It seemed that the lyrical themes of each OK Computer track was picked up on and developed by the ensuing In Rainbows cut.
Surprisingly, Thom Yorke himself, in an interview with the BBC’s Steve Lamacq referenced the theory almost as soon as it arose in November 2007. When explaining how the track Reckoner was the center-point of In Rainbows, Yorke appeared to both shoot down and partially confirm at least one element of the theory…
“There's all these mad theories on the net,” Yorke told Lamacq. “I mean, I don't know, I'm not one of those people who reads them, but someone read one out to me, it's all about tens and apparently, mathematically that [Reckoner] IS the center-point!”
According to Puddlegum, an insider got in touch once the theory had caught wind, and shared that he was, essentially, bang on the money.
“The meaning behind all of this is right in front of our faces, we’re just overlooking it,” the anonymous source allegedly said. ”[Thom] has been expecting an article much like this one for a couple of years, as have I. But I’m willing to wager he’ll have fun waiting a few more. On the other hand, it seems to annoy him that no one ‘gets it’ yet, given the mountain of clues.”
The theory really started to snowball when comedy and entertainment website Cracked included the theory in a 2010 listicle entitled ’10 Mind-Blowing Easter Eggs Hidden in Famous Albums.’ They were giddily swept away by the binary code hysteria;
“In the way that Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End all flow into each other on The Beatles' Abbey Road, these songs all flow into one another as well, as if they were all recorded in one big session.”
Over the 2010s, the theory became a popular discussion point within the Radiohead fan community. Some would, of course, dismiss the theory as pure rubbish from the outset, yet other readers were tantalised enough to make the playlist and judge for themselves.
In the eyes of the theory's true believers, this was irrefutable evidence that Radiohead were toying with their audiences - playing impenetrable psychological games and operating on a more intelligent level than other musicians.
It's all very reminiscent of other great (read, bizarre) musical conspiracy theories, including the similarly clue-centric Paul is Dead theory which plagued the Beatles, and of course the infamous suggestion that Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon was designed to accompany a playback of celluloid classic The Wizard of Oz.
In psychological terms, this drive to connect the clearly unconnected by noticing patterns in myriad disparate pieces of 'evidence' is known as 'Apophenia'. It relates to humanity's willingness to perceive meaning within random, unrelated data.
“Our entire left hemisphere is a great confabulator - it makes up evidence before the facts are in. So yes, we have an inherent need to match things up,” said cognitive psychologist and musician Daniel Levitin in an interview with music and culture website Little White Lies about music's great conspiracy theories.
“The ‘deeper meaning’,” he concludes,“is that the brain is a giant pattern detector - it seeks to find order in chaos and to match things up even if there is no apparent relationship, as part of a grand-scale prediction system. If this goes with this, they must be related, and maybe I can predict the behaviour of x by observing the behaviour of y."
Ultimately, the Radiohead Binary Code theory was revealed to have been a bit of creative fun, devised entirely by Puddlegum. The frequency of the number 10 was certainly not a fabricated fact, but that was likely entirely coincidental… right?
Curious to see if it would take off as a slightly believable music-listening conspiracy theory, and to interrogate those links between the two fantastic Radiohead records, the theory became a glorious example of apophenia.
Regardless, the theory has become a firm piece of Radiohead lore, and, when you fuse together those two albums, you certainly do end up with a magnificent double album and a really sublime listening experience. That can't be argued with.
As the theory's originator admitted in his post on Reddit in 2024, “I never expected it to go viral the way it did. Thom Yorke being asked about it by Steve Lamacq on BBC Radio sent it everywhere. I was having fun with it, to be honest. I was following up on a post about there being a connection between the two albums. The first post had gone viral, so I suggested the playlist 10 days later.”
However, Puddlegum did go on to share that the aforementioned mysterious 'insider' message was genuine; “I had a mysterious message saying that the first article was ‘close.’ Were they legitimate? I’m not sure. But Thom did take the time to read the comments on the posts.”
So, it’s not ‘real’ then as such. But, as a remarkable feat of creative dot-joining and an imaginative way to approach the band’s music, we applaud the drive to concoct such a theory.
If you want to give a listen to the fabled ’01 and 10’ playlist yourself, here’s the correct track order (with Karma Police and Fitter Happier the only tracks from the same record appearing side-by-side).
1. Airbag (OK Computer)
2. 15 Step (In Rainbows)
3. Paranoid Android (OK Computer)
4. Bodysnatchers (In Rainbows)
5. Subterranean Homesick Alien (OK Computer)
6. Nude (In Rainbows)
7. Exit Music (For A Film) (OK Computer)
8. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (In Rainbows)
9. Let Down (OK Computer)
10. All I Need (In Rainbows)
11. Karma Police (OK Computer)
12. Fitter Happier (OK Computer)
13. Faust Arp (In Rainbows)
14. Electioneering (OK Computer)
15. Reckoner (In Rainbows)
16. Climbing Up The Walls (OK Computer)
17. House Of Cards (In Rainbows)
18. No Surprises" (OK Computer)
19. Jigsaw Falling Into Place (In Rainbows)
20. Lucky (OK Computer)
21. Videotape (In Rainbows)
22. The Tourist (OK Computer)
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